The great libel case
Subtitle: Dr. Hunter versus Pall Mall Gazette : being the verbatim report of the medical evidence given by Dr. Williams ... [et al.] showing their opinions on the nature, causes and cure of consumption with explanatory remarks by Dr. Hunter, the plaintiff.
Contributors: Hunter, Robert, b. 1826, plaintiff.; Williams, Charles J. B. 1805-1889.; Pall Mall Gazette (London, England),
Publisher: Mitchell
Published: 1867
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 404
Subjects: Hunter, Robert, b. 1826 -- Trials, litigation, etc.; Tuberculosis.; Respiratory organs -- Diseases.; Trials (Libel) -- England -- London.
Genres: Trials, litigation, etc.
Other titles: Dr. Hunter versus Pall Mall Gazette; Doctor Hunter versus Pall Mall Gazette
Description: Dr. Robert Hunter, the plaintiff in this London libel case, had lost his action against the Pall Mall Gazette for publishing defamatory libels about his medical qualifications, his professional ethics and his actual treatments of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis. He here forcefully defends his medical qualifications ("Doctor of Medicine of the University of New York, and Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery of Canada"), counters the "charges of 'inveigling' and 'terrifying' persons to become my patients, of 'deluding' them with the hope of being able to cure them, when I knew that I could not do so; of 'extorting enormous fees', and of 'malpractice'." Hunter's painstaking self-defence and self-justification throws much light on the treatment of TB in mid-Victorian London at a time when the number of deaths caused by TB in urban populations was indecently high.